Sunday, July 21, 2013

Tibetan Red - Scanning

Official net-re-release of classic Tibetan Red early music pieces, originally released on cassette in 1985 and on CD in 2000, whose Vital Weekly review is still a good presentation :

"To put your entire musical output on one CD, and thus offering the "complete works by" - what an interesting idea (that's why I am so fond of Varese and Webern - the consequent, small body of work). In the mid 80s somebody recorded as Tibetan Red, having one track on the LP 'Freedom In A Vacuum', the first release by a label with the same name and a cassette on that very same label. That somebody came from Spain, went to Canada and is now in Southern Europe. Thus we see the CD released on a label from Barcelona.
'Scanning' (the comp piece aswell in it's complete form on cassette) is an excellent piece of layered shortwave sounds, morse codes and underlying drones from a synth. 'Kalahari Fire Birth' uses many unidentifable sounds, set against the tape-loop (sampling was virtually non-existent in those days) of ethno origin. A raw version of zoviet*france like ambience. 'The Sistine Chapel' is a previously unreleased track, and also works with looped ethno material, here the didgeredoo. All three tracks clock at 20 minutes and all have a trance like spirit, without leaping into boredom. What I particulary like about this CD is the undated, fresh rawness of the 80s cassette movement, transformed to CD. An aural document of the 'anything goes' attitude, which Vital owes it's credit to, too".
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, N° 244.